Two members of the Board of Nursing of the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) were found guilty of leaking the questionnaires for the board exams in 2006, the Office of the Ombudsman said yesterday.

Ordered dismissed from the service were Anesia Buenafe-Dionisio and Virginia Diolola-Madeja, acting Ombudsman Orlando Casimiro said. Dionisio was assigned to Psychiatric Nursing while Madeja was examiner in Medical Surgery Nursing.

In the 32-page decision, the anti-graft office established that majority of Dionisio’s test questions had reached the reviewees of the RA Gapuz Review Center in Baguio City and Institute for Review and Special Studies in Manila.

“Dionisio’s defense of loss of her manuscript is self-serving and inconceivable,” according to the decision approved by the acting Ombudsman.

The anti-graft office added: “Moreover, upon learning of the loss of her copy of test questionnaires, she failed to relay the fact to the appropriate authorities.”

It also found that Madeja was liable for gross inexcusable neglect in causing the premature and unauthorized disclosure of her proposed questions.

The test questions were leaked by the examiners despite being highly confidential, the acting Ombudsman said.

It was during the time of former Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez when criminal charges were filed against the duo for violation of Section 15 (a) of Republic Act 8981 (An Act Modernizing the Professional Regulation Commission) and Section 3 (k) of RA 3019 (Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act) before the Sandiganbayan.

The case stemmed from a complaint filed before the National Bureau of Investigation by the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) on the alleged leakage in the June 11 and 12, 2006 Nurses Licensure Examination (NLE).

Records show a few days after the NLE, several nursing personalities complained about an alleged leakage in Baguio City after “students/reviewees, identified through their jackets, from RA Gapuz Review Center finished the examination in a shorter period of time than the others.’’

The investigation conducted by the PRC investigating committee showed that “a total of 56 situations contained in respondent Madeja’s manuscript, identified as keywords, appeared in the handwritten leakage note distributed to the reviewees of RA Gapuz Review Center in Baguio City and other parts of the country and five situations therein…with a total of 25 questions that actually came out in the NLE in the subject Medical Surgery Nursing Test.’’

The PRC report also said a total of 90 questions from Dionisio’s test were among the 100 examination questions asked in the board test in Psychiatric Nursing.

THE NBI on Friday warned applicants to expect a delay in the processing of their clearances after Mega Data Corp., the company that had been running the bureau’s computerized clearance processing system for the past 30 years, pulled out its software and hardware when its contract expired on June 30.

But Gerry Perdido, head of the National Bureau of Investigation’s Office of the Deputy Director for Technical Services, said officials would do their best to shorten any delays in the processing of NBI clearances.

“We will use our staff to replace the system, but we will not revert to the manual system because it will cause so much inconvenience to the public,” Perdido said.

“The NBI clearance is a vital need.”

The NBI releases about 22,000 clearances daily with help from its computers.

But Mega’s contract expired without being renewed after the Justice Department’s Separate Bids and Awards Committee failed to come up with the terms of reference required for bidding out a new contract for the service in October 2009.

NBI Director Magtanggol Gatdula had earlier said five firms joined the bidding: V.G. Roxas and Co Inc., Mega Data Corp., Total Information Management, Systems and Plan Integrator and Development Corp., and Data Trail Corp. But he said the Awards Committee issued a resolution on Sept. 27 last year declaring a failure of bidding.

Mega had been providing the NBI various computers, data capture, image capture and card production equipment and supplies to serve the bureau’s data-processing needs.

In a media advisory released yesterday, however, deputy director for Technical Services Rey Esmeralda said the bureau would be using a different system.

“We ask the public to bear with us during the transition state of our operations,” Esmeralda said.

He said applications for clearances would again be entertained on July 4 after the bureau stopped accepting them Friday. Macon Ramos-Araneta